Letters to the Editor: Media must be allowed access to Gaza
Protesters at the National March for Palestine in Dublin on Saturday to mark the second year of the genocide in Gaza. Picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews
Would you trust Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the same room together to bring peace to Gaza?
That essentially is the question facing Hamas and Arab mediators regarding the validity of what’s contained in the so-called 20-point peace plan to bring an end to the killing in Gaza, which I heard the Taoiseach and Tánaiste urging both sides to accept. I have to agree with a UK columnist when he wrote during the week in a hard-hitting article: “Anyone signing up to it would have to be mad.”
These, after all, are the same men that allowed war planes to fly across several territories to bomb the mediators in Qatar (yet another breach of international law) while Netanyahu himself cut a lonely figure speaking to practically an empty chamber at the UN last week.
Of course, everyone wants the bloodshed to end. But the first thing that must be done is to allow the international press in to Gaza and report from the ground.
Anything else would be a complete breach of faith to the memories of 66,000 Palestinians (that we know of) that have lost their lives, and now possibly their homeland, in the past two years in the revenge-fest unleashed by Israel.
To the minister of education: I plead that you take the necessary step to allow each young person with dyslexia the same opportunities in education as those without learning constraints.
I see the immense effort and time my daughter puts into her homework and schoolwork every evening, and the relatively little time her non-dyslexic brother takes to complete his work. He reads through material at a much faster pace and, having read it, can instantly recall the information. She takes so much longer to read it and, having struggled to read it, finds the information hasn’t been retained. If, however, the information is read to her (she is an auditory learner, rather than visual), she has super, insightful answers to the question being asked, but takes longer to get her point across.
Does this make her less intelligent? I think not, yet our schooling system and examination processes put her at a massive disadvantage.
Extra time goes some way to level the so-far unfair playing field.
Along with thousands of my country men and women, I have “soldiered” in the seemingly forever-troubled lands of the Middle East. While I have few, if any, answers as to why such insane bloodshed continues, the exposure underpins my conviction that any peace deal for Gaza must include a Palestinian voice.
Destroy Hezbollah and Hamas, a seemingly unattainable task to date, and another proxy voice will ordain itself, on a similar roulette wheel, as the voice for these oppressed people. An invitation to come, sit alongside, and sup from even one of the numerous “cups of wisdom” regularly served on their behalf, as by Trump and Netanyahu this past week, is still awaited by the Palestinians and is the only feasible starting point to building credible peace in their land.
I have a solution to the issue of flags being posted on lampposts, which is associated with a xenophobic attitude recently amplified across the UK and Ireland.
Councils could make a white flag with their local council logo and a text reading: “Xenophobia will not improve your life!” with a smiley emoticon and a heart emoticon, just to rub it in, and place them just under the Irish flags posted on lampposts.
That would set the record straight, leaving the flags in place to express our national love for our land, our Constitution, for each other, and for those who come to Ireland to live legally, to contribute to our always-growing culture.
Nick Folley bemoans the absence of Maria Steen from the presidential election ballot and dismisses the three candidates as nondescript in the process. As I understand it, Ms Steen is opposed to gay marriage, divorce, contraception, and “non-procreative” sex. She is entitled to her views and is not shy about expressing them.
In a speech made in Knock last March, she criticised Irish politics and society in language that astounded me. The speech is on YouTube and is well worth watching in order to locate Ms Steen on the political spectrum. The fact that Ms Steen had difficulty getting 20 members of the Oireachtas to nominate her should not come as a shock to anyone, and it certainly isn’t a defect in the electoral process. The Oireachtas and county councils performed a function assigned to them by the Constitution.
Messrs de Valera, Matheson, and Hearne got the thresholds right, in my view. Simply put, Ms Steen would have been nominated easily if it wasn’t for her political views, ideology, outlook on contemporary Irish politics and society, and her policy preferences. To paraphrase the late great Albert Reynolds: Sure, that’s democracy for you.
While some may have found humour in the meeting this week of Pete Hegseth with US military leadership — and it was farcical at times — the potential implications of the meeting are chilling.
In a ridiculous demonstration of machismo, the secretary of war has essentially asked US military leadership to forego the Geneva Conventions governing the execution of war. He has also asked them to be ready to attack citizens of the US in their own cities, and to jettison all the hard won protections for female and LGBT+ members of the armed forces. There then followed a bizarre cameo by the commander in chief, which many in the audience, long-standing professional soldiers, must have found unnerving. Corridor conversations following the performance would have been very interesting, I’d imagine.
Each week we are presented with yet more evidence of a regime teetering toward complete dysfunction and this episode, along with the government shutdown that followed, doesn’t bode well for the US in the near to medium term.
I note that the Love 30 Campaign held a rally outside the Dáil, calling for a default 30km/h speed limit in all urban areas. That would be cities, towns, villages, residential estates, and outside schools and other places where lots of people are moving about.
I am fully behind this campaign. It has already been provided for in the Road Traffic Act 2024, which provided for a default 30km/h in built-up areas. The first part of that legislation was introduced earlier this year, where we had 60km/h introduced as the default on local roads and rural areas and that has been implemented effectively.
However, both the Department of Transport and minister have stated that the speed reduction in built-up areas will be done by means of guidelines. In other words, local authorities can designate roads at their own discretion as 30km/h.
I believe there must be some rationale when it comes to adopting this position. I am acutely aware that it can be difficult to define a built-up area, but they are definitely within all the legislation that’s there. Remember that there are 85 towns and cities that could be done at the stroke of a pen if the department were willing to give its imprimatur. It could be argued that some TDs and senators may not want lower speed limits in their area, as they may think it’s not in their interest. The Love 30 campaign believes 30km/h has a negligible effect on journey time, and that’s been proven. It’s also been proven that it saves lives and reduces injuries. I applaud these campaigners for their efforts.
